5.1 Plan for now to live well

What’s next?

Some people have told us that after their diagnosis of dementia, it wasn’t clear what they should or could do next. Writing a life plan for this year helps you figure out what’s next. It helps you prioritise what is important to you, and what steps and strategies you need to get there. Having a life plan helps:

• You to stay in control and have purpose.
• The people who support you (family and friends, professionals) understand what you want and means they can help you achieve your plan.

Your life plan is flexible. As things change in your life, your plan might need to change.

• If you already used the My life plan worksheet you may already have identified some things that are meaningful to you, your goals, barriers and strategies for your life plan.
• You might also find the goal setting and planning workbook produced by people with dementia in collaboration with Alzheimer’s UK useful.

Your life plan is not a care plan. A care plan is something that health professionals and services write so that they can treat or support you. A care plan includes the actions that health professionals and services should be doing to support you. You write your life plan, and activities on your life plan are things that you and your family are doing.

Setting up a life plan involves three steps:

Step 1: Start with your goals

Goals are the things that you want to do this year. These can be big things or little things, however, try to make them realistic.

Here is an example of some goals:

• Go to Queensland to visit my sister.
• Finish re-building the back shed.
• Keep fit enough to walk up and down the stairs or to play with my grandchildren.
• Keep driving.
• See my family and friends regularly.

Start with 2-5 goals. If you can’t figure out a goal, write down some things that are important to you in life.

Step 2: Identify barriers to meeting your goals

Barriers are things which might get in the way of meeting your goals. These might be symptoms of dementia, finances, logistics, family, social changes that have happened because of dementia, or other social reasons. As you put your life plan into action, you might encounter more barriers.

Here is an example of some barriers:

• We might not be able to afford flights to Queensland.
• Some of the shed is tricky. I measure pieces of timber and cut, but they won’t fit.
• People keep telling me I shouldn’t drive now.
• I’ve lost a lot of fitness. I can’t get up and down from the floor easily to play with the grandchildren.

List these barriers in your life plan. Identifying barriers is the first step in developing ways to overcome them.

Step 3: Use strategies to overcome barriers

Once you have identified the barriers, you have a clear list of things you can work on addressing. You can identify strategies to figure out how to overcome barriers by:

• Reading through this website, choosing suggestions that make sense to you, and add them to your life plan.
• Reviewing any action items which are presented in a box at the bottom of most pages on this website.
• Talking through your life plan with family or friends.
• Discussing your life plan with your doctor, dementia nurse, allied health professional or case manager. You might ask for a dementia care plan, or a chronic condition management plan from your GP  to complement your life plan. You might ask for your home care plan (if you have one) to be modified to better support your life plan.

Some examples of ways people living with dementia have overcome barriers:

• Barry and Joan met Barry’s sister at a half-way point between their homes, which was much cheaper than flying to Queensland.
• Luigi talked with his cousin who agreed to come over for a couple of hours each Saturday to work on the shed together.
• Susan found an occupational therapist to get a professional driving assessment, which enabled her to continue driving.
• Bill used a GP chronic condition management plan to subsidise exercise physiology sessions to improve his fitness and strength.